


Helping Hands / Sweet Substitutions

by tawg



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Burn (with a wave of my hand), Fanfic of Fanfic, Gen, mentions of past Castiel/Balthazar, mentions of past Dean/Gabriel, mourning fic, the reality of having wings is not all that sexy, wing fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-07 19:29:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard, getting used to absence. Sometimes friends make it better. Sometimes they make it worse. (Or: wing-grooming for dummies.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Helping Hands / Sweet Substitutions

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a 'missing scene' from princess_aleera's fic, [Burn (With a Wave of My Hand)](http://princess-aleera.livejournal.com/134922.html), which I strongly recommend you read (also, this takes place near the end of Burn, and is therefore spoilery). If you're just here for Sassy wing-grooming, here's what you need to know: people in this universe can be born with special abilities, and sometimes horrible things happen to good people.

Sam has spent a week going back and forth through Dean’s journal, reading everything there is about Gabriel and Castiel, the two Angels camping out with him in his brother’s apartment. There are some frustrating absences, some assumed knowledge that is completely Dean. The journal only describes Gabriel as a person as far as him being juvenile but trustworthy for the most part. There is no mention of Dean sleeping with Gabriel, what the attraction was there. Sometimes Sam watches Gabriel moving around Dean’s space – because the apartment is Dean’s now, had become his in the years of Sam’s absence – watches the way Gabriel lounges when watching television, the way he folds clothes without bothering to make the lines straight, the way he comforts his nephew with little nudges. Sam can understand his brother and Gabriel together, is grateful that Dean had found comfort somewhere. 

But it is the holes in Castiel’s story that drive Sam mad. So much is laid out there – Castiel’s relationship with his half-brother, their shared ability as healers, even some of Dean’s envy at their apartment (though it is gone now, Castiel living out of boxes stacked in Dean’s room. Dean had given most of Sam’s clothes away in his absence, and Castiel had given Sam all of Balthazar’s shirts that would fit him. A generous inheritance from this man he’d never met), the usefulness of knowing people who worked at a hospital.

Completely missing from the neatly typed, grammatically erratic journal is any mention of Castiel’s primary ability. It is just so freaking Dean to take it for granted that whoever would read the journal after him would be able to fill in the blanks.

It's just... you don’t ask about these things. They come up in conversation, sure, and it is considered rude to refuse to share your skills with the other members of the community. But Castiel is a small and hunched figure in Dean’s apartment, quiet and contained and so deep in mourning that Sam feels bad for not worrying more. But Sam has his own grief to process, and Castiel has Gabriel to look after him, has a job, doesn’t have four years of his life stolen away. It just doesn’t feel right to ask Castiel with his bad back and perpetual sadness about his life, to pry into his person like that.

And then Sam comes home one day, closes the door quietly in case Gabriel is asleep on the couch again and steps softly into the living room. And he understands exactly why Dean never made note of Castiel’s primary ability, why the line of Castiel’s spine seems so rounded and hunched. Sam is an idiot.

Castiel has wings.

Brown and black and textured and large. Though they look too small to give any lift to a grown man they still spread across Dean’s living area, still fan out impressively showing a muscular back where before, under all of the layers Castiel wore, Sam had assumed some kind of deformity. Not something like this. Not something wonderful and beautiful, and it makes such a sudden amount of sense what with Castiel being an Angel. Sam has to laugh at it, a small chuckle that makes Castiel start.

There is a rushed whirl of black and brown, a crack of air shifting, and Sam is knocked over, papers go flying and the hard cut of Castiel’s wings through the small space sends a lamp crashing to the floor. Castiel is startled, a wild animal unexpectedly cornered and Sam can only stare up at him, his mouth open dumbly and the years of training and hunting forgotten. _Sparrow_ , he thinks. _What a misleading name._

And then Castiel straightens out of his defensive crouch, a sudden movement that changes the shape of the room as he pulls his wings close, folds them flat against his back and Sam can barely see them anymore, they fit so neatly with the lines of his torso. “Sorry,” Castiel says, extending a hand to help Sam up. “I didn’t mean... I’m sorry.”

Sam takes the hand offered to him, though Castiel isn’t much help in pulling him to his feet, his frame seemingly too light to yank Sam up off the floor. “No, I’m sorry,” Sam replies. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” He watches as Castiel takes a step back, opening up the space between them before twisting to one side – Sam leans back, expecting the wings to stretch a little in counterbalance, but Castiel keeps them pressed flat and tight to his back – reaching for his shirt. Sam reaches out, places a hand on his wrist. “You don’t have to,” he says. “I mean, if I interrupted you...”

“No, it’s not-” Castiel frowns, embarrassed and ashamed and wordless for a moment. “They’re a pain, really. I wanted to stretch but,” he casts a helpless look around Dean’s living room, now a mess of scattered magazines and candy wrappers, and short a lamp. He leaves the rest of his words unsaid.

“It’s fine,” Sam replies. “It’s all Gabriel’s mess anyway. And Dean hated those lamps. It’s even in his journal.” Castiel tries for a smile but it sits wrong on his face. He twists the shirt in his hands, the picture of unease. “I can leave you alone,” Sam offers. “Give you some space.”

“I...” Castiel’s voice sounds suddenly stiff, and he doesn’t look Sam in the eyes when he speaks. “I need some help,” he finally manages. “Balthazar used to, but.”

“Right.”

“And I can’t-”

“Sure.”

“If you wouldn’t mind?”

“I’d love to.” Castiel gives Sam a skeptical look, and Sam hastens to amend his words. “I mean, it’s not a problem.”

Castiel continues to look at Sam as though he is a deeply strange person, but he slowly turns around, presenting his back to Sam and gripping the top of Dean’s couch with both hands. “They itch,” he explains, and Sam can see that Castiel’s ears have gone red, his head is ducked low and his wings and shoulders hunched up, as if he is admitting to something scandalous.

“Okay,” Sam said, raising his hands and then stopping. “What do I do?”

“There are new feathers, and they have this... coating? They feel like thin straws,” Castiel explains haltingly. Sam gets the impression that he has never had to put words to these things before. Castiel reaches up with one hand and pokes around the feathers at the top of one wing, though angle is wrong as the feathers point downwards and Castiel has to fight against the way they lie to show Sam what he means. “Here, like this one.” Sam slides his fingers through stiff feathers, finds the spike and runs his fingertip along it.

“Okay,” he says, looking at the white-ish coat over a brown feather. “Find the straws. Then what?”

“You need to crumble the coating. It’s not hard, just kind of,” Castiel presses the pads of his thumb and middle finger together in demonstration, “squish.”

Sam tries it. At first it feels like it’s achieving nothing, just squashing the spike of a feather flat. Then he runs his fingers over it again, and the hard coating comes away in tiny flakes, exposing the softness of a new feather underneath, not completely grown yet. “Does that feel better?” he asks, wiping away the flaking coating.

“I can’t really feel them,” Castiel replies. “They’re feathers, not fingers. If they sit right I don’t really notice them at all. Like hair, I guess.”

“So you can’t control them or anything?” In response, Castiel ruffles the shorter feathers of his wings, puffing them up and for a moment he looks as though he’s doubled in size. Then he lays them flat again, sleek and a little glossy, and Sam can’t fight the pleased laugh that escapes him. “This is so cool,” he says, running his fingers over a section of wing.

“Right, because getting covered in wing-dandruff is clearly the highlight of anyone’s day,” Castiel replies drily.

Sam makes a noncommittal hum. “It’s more interesting than dropping resumes around,” he replies. Sam has a complete lack of recent job experience, what with being legally dead and more accurately possessed for the past four years. Though Gabriel and Castiel have both offered and agreed to be fake references for him, he’s not holding a lot of hope. “Maybe wing grooming will turn out to be an employable skill?” he suggests, sliding his fingers up through Castiel’s feathers and pushing against the grain.

Castiel twists away and makes a small, disgruntled noise. Sam jerks his hand back, and then gently tries to pet the ruffled feathers back in place. “I’m not sure I’d call it a skill just yet,” Castiel finally comments, shifting his shoulders and stretching his wings in small movements, trying to lay the feathers back in place himself.

“Sorry,” Sam says, reaching out again when Castiel finally stands still. It’s a relaxing job for Sam, sliding his fingers under feathers (he discovers that coming from the side seems easiest for the long feathers), cracking the waxy coat with his thumbnail, brushing it away. It’s not mindless though, when he tugs too hard or twists a feather Cas will twitch and shift. There’s a large one that sticks out at an odd angle about halfway down Castiel’s left wing. Sam assumes that it’s loose and just needs to be pulled out. Sam is very, very wrong, and gets smacked in the head with a wing. It hurts, something else that Sam hadn’t expected, what with feathers being light and thin, but there’s a sharpness to them at high velocity, and it’s hard to hold an argument with such a large surface area. Sam leaves the crooked feathers alone after that.

“What are the soft bits called?” Sam asks, running the back of his hands over the long, glossy feathers. He has no idea where the flesh and bone of the wing ends; he suspects that launching an investigation would result in another wing to the head.

“I don’t know,” Castiel replies. “The plume or the vane, I think.” He has his right wing stretched out, is grooming the underside while Sam works at the back. It would take too long with just Sam working on them, and Sam suspects that Castiel was getting fed up with the tugs and twists.

“I figured you’d be the expert on feathers and stuff.”

“Can you name all the bones in your hands?” Castiel returns, a sour note in his voice.

“Sorry,” Sam replies, pausing to wipe the soft coating of waxy flakes that cover his hands on his pants. Castiel was right – there’s a significant covering of what essentially amounts to wing-dandruff covering the carpet, the couch, most of Sam, and nearly all of Cas, sticking to the skin of his back, his arms. Some of it caught in his hair. Sam’s going to need to vacuum when they’re done. “You’re right. I guess you just use them, not study them.”

Castiel shrugs, his wings dipping as his shoulders rise and he holds the pose for a moment, stretching some muscles that Sam is sure are absent from his own body. “The less attention I have to pay them, the better.”

Sam is silent for a while. He’s learned the difference between the stiffness of a trapped feather and the stiffness of a feather shaft, learned which feathers can be ruffled and which make Cas twitch with discomfort. Now he realises that he’s learning why Castiel has kept his wings hidden for the weeks they’ve been living together, why they never came up in conversation. Sam had his own problems with his abilities in the past, the fear and guilt that came from using them involuntarily, without control. The shame and anger that has come from his mind and body being hijacked, being used for awful things. How different would his feelings towards his abilities be if they were more conspicuous? Physical manifestations that were not only hard to hide, but also were high maintenance, itchy, and time-consuming.

“Well,” he finally says, “if you ever need help with anything, you can ask me.”

Castiel looks down at the back of the couch, picks at some of the white mess he has shed and then drops it. Sam watches as it drifts towards the floor. Then he hears feet in the hallway and a key in the lock, and Castiel is removing his wing from Sam’s grip with a neat fold of feather and bone, is pulling his shirt on as Gabriel walks through the door with a jaunty whistle.

Gabriel spots Castiel pulling on the tight tee, reaching for his usual button up with the tips of his brown wings still poking out from under the stretched cotton. And then Gabriel gives Sam an outright leer, waiting for Sam to open his mouth in protest before he wiggles one eyebrow and his mouth softens into a grin. He approves. Which Sam finds baffling until he thinks of the comfort he finds in knowing that Dean had something shared with Gabriel, that Gabriel still cares about Dean enough that he wears Dean’s leather jacket.

“I come bearing pizza and beer,” Gabriel says grandly.

“It’s still your turn to clean the living room,” Castiel returns gruffly.

“There is no way that is still my mess,” Gabriel shoots back, heading into the little kitchenette. Sam rubs his thumb against his fingers, feeling a fine dust of wax coating his hands. There’s a smell to it, not unpleasant. The smell of skin when soap has faded, or hair when the oil starts to return. After his possession, Sam has done everything to clean his body, get the stains off it. It’s oddly comforting, having the smell of life on his skin again.

“I’ll do the carpet,” he says, interrupting Castiel and Gabriel’s bickering. “You two just focus on getting everything off the floor.” And then Sam exits the room to the sound of Castiel chastising Gabriel for putting the candy wrappers back on the coffee table instead of in the bin. Castiel’s movements make more sense now, Sam watching as the three of them tidy up quickly. The curve of his back has stopped being an awkward hunch and is now an awesome secret, beautiful and isolating and probably a painful reminder of Balthazar, who had helped and cared and groomed. Sam has seen photographs of Balthazar, one held to Dean’s fridge with a magnet, a man whose face looks so right with a warm smile on it. Sam wonders if Castiel had been different when Balthazar was alive, or if they’d been stark contrasts.

The three of them eat pizza and drink a beer, Sam and Cas on the couch and Gabriel sitting cross-legged on the floor. Gabriel talks, telling them about his day at the hospital, about how much he hates sick people and how sick children are the worst, with their sticky, snotty hands. Castiel rolls his eyes, tells Gabriel that the whole point of hospitals is that sick people go there. He smiles at some of Gabriel’s rants, a small ghost of a thing but pleasant and kind. 

“Well, kids. You have a fun night and don’t party too hard,” Gabriel says after finishing off his beer, climbing to his feet and stretching, his shirt riding up. Sam has a suspicion that Gabriel is wearing Dean’s underwear, but he doesn’t comment on it, can’t tell if it’s a symbol of undying affection or Gabriel’s unwillingness to buy new underpants when he can steal someone else’s. From what Sam knows of Gabriel, it’s probably the latter. Some soft part of him finds it sweet nevertheless.

Castiel reaches for another beer, so Sam does as well. They drink in silence, the television on low, watching a show on Animal Planet without paying attention. Castiel usually waits until Gabriel is well and truly asleep before following him to bed.

“What’s it like?” Sam asks. “Sleeping with Gabriel? Wait, I mean. Not, like-” Sam cuts himself off, afraid of digging himself deeper, wondering if Castiel will take offence at Sam’s clumsy words.

Castiel gives Sam an amused look. “He snores,” he replies. “His feet are always cold. And I keep waking up and finding Skittles in the bed.”

Sam snorts a laugh. “Dean and I had to share a bed for a while. His fell apart and it took him ages to get a new frame. And he sleeps- _slept_ with a gun under a pillow, and I slept with a knife and,” Sam has to pause, try to push the grin from his face. “And it didn’t work at all. I’d always end up sleeping on his gun, and once he tried to steal my pillow in his sleep and cut himself.”

Castiel is smiling, a little larger than before, his expressions made larger with beer and conversation. He leans closer to Sam, dropping his voice to give Gabriel some peace in the other room. “Balthazar and I used to have some protection spells around our apartment. But one of us would always set them off at four in the morning, coming home covered in blood and having to explain it to the neighbours. We told them that some of our friends were in a Swedish metal vampire band, and that you got half-price tickets to the gig if you went in some kind of costume.”

Sam laughs again, resting the mouth of his beer bottle against his lower lip. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy to go for metal.”

Cas stares at Sam’s mouth, the bottle still resting lazily against his lip, when he replies, “You seem like someone who can follow instructions, but...” There’s a pause, and the two of them apparently realise the tone, the body language on display at the same time. Sam pushes himself up straighter, lowers his bottle as Castiel twists away, arranging the empties by one leg off the coffee table. “But after today,” he continues weakly, “I know better.”

“I meant it,” Sam says suddenly, his words hanging awkwardly between them. “If you need anything, you can just ask me.”

“I should get to bed,” Castiel says, collecting the empty bottles into his arms and standing up. “I’ve got a shift tomorrow.”

“Here,” Sam says, standing up and reaching for the bottles, “let me-”

And then they’re standing face to face, not as close as they were only an hour earlier but somehow so much more intimate. Castiel’s eyes are dark in the flickering light from the television, his lips soft and parted as their hands get tangled around warm glass and hot flesh. Sam can smell Castiel, can smell the sweet nature of feathers still on his own skin, can smell body heat and beer and bad decisions. 

Castiel’s mouth is soft under Sam’s own. And then it isn’t. Is hard and demanding and hot and desperate. Is teeth and tongues and hips pressing forward and the percussion soundtrack of glass bottles falling onto dusty carpet. Their hands are tangled together between their bodies, Sam stroking the bump of a knuckle, Castiel griping the sensitive skin at Sam’s inner wrist. And then Cas pulls away with a gasp, Sam chases him and they trade small, sharp kisses, presses of lips and grazes of teeth. Eyes closed and breath coming in pants. What a thing, to be in charge of your own body, your own lust. What a thing, to taste something so new and so familiar.

Castiel steps away, takes another step back, pulls his hands free. Sam stands there, eyes closed and lips parted, listens to Castiel’s uneasy steps in the dimly-lit room, hears the door to Dean’s bedroom open, close softly with care and consideration. Sam takes and deep breath, holds it, licks his lips, and then he sighs. Opens his eyes, runs his fingers through his hair, stares around the room for one long, lost moment, collects the scattered bottles. His blood singing and his flesh tingling, and Sam does everything he can to avoid feeling anything.

Sam is nowhere close to processing everything he’s been through, not yet. And Castiel is even further away. It was just another moment, in a life full of moments that lack meaning.

A text from Gabriel arrives on Sam’s (Dean’s) phone as Sam flops onto his bed. A simple, winking emoticon. Sam is an idiot. He buries his face in his hands, and falls asleep inhaling the dusty scent of wings.


End file.
